


As Above, So Below

by elunablue



Category: Detroit: Become Human (Video Game)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - 1910s, Explicit Language, Period-Typical Racism, Psychological Horror, Religious Fanaticism, Science Fiction & Fantasy, Violence, bioshock infinite au, everyone is human
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-06-28
Updated: 2018-07-03
Packaged: 2019-05-29 16:19:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 20,027
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15077009
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/elunablue/pseuds/elunablue
Summary: Massively in-dept from his decades long gambling addiction and severe alcoholism, private investigator Henry “Hank” Anderson lives a dreadfully miserable life alone in the city of Detroit where he spends his days taking on small cases and assignments here and there to make ends meet. Then, during the summer of 1912, he mysteriously receives an offer from two alluring strangers who offer to wipe his slate clean if he agrees to come and work for them. His job description:“Bring us the boy and wipe away the debt.”





	1. Always a Man, Always a Lighthouse

**Author's Note:**

> Like _Ex_Machina_ , this is going to be a Detroit-based fic where I take an already established story and script and transform it into something new with the inclusion of Hank and Connor at the forefront.
> 
> This story is developed from the 2013 game, _Bioshock Infinite_ , and I will again be attempting to convert the script in a similar, yet transformative way to incorporate a new cast of characters.
> 
> Since games take dozens of hours to play, I think it'll be a fun challenge to turn this into a cohesive and enjoyable novel, and I hope you all enjoy. It'll probably be quite long.

_“Hank, are you afraid of God?” Connor asked, wrapping his arms around himself anxiously, his voice quiet and full of worry for the older man who stood a few feet in front of him._

_The city was falling around them, being washed away in smoke and fire, as Connor’s innocence shattered to the ground in burning flame. Cold winds blew past and showered them in the burning smells of the blaze. A smell that could never be forgotten, like the corpses of wood and stone, the corpses of the memory of an entire city of people, now gone._

_“No,” Hank said, turning away from the boy then, wrought with guilt and unable to meet the intensity of the other’s gaze. “But I’m afraid of you.”_

* * * * *

**July 6th, 1912 - Somewhere Off the Coast of Maine**

Spending the night at sea during a thunderstorm was a more terrifying prospect than any feverish nightmare could ever be capable of conjuring. All along the water, lightning struck the waves with bolts of electricity that shot through like a gun, and then spread outwards in jagged lines of purple light. Ships were all called to dock by the beckoning brightness of lighthouse beacons, pulling them in with promise of sanctuary. If anybody were out here right now, they’d surely have signed their death-warrant.

But there, amidst the waves, being thrown about in a shoddy little wooden boat, as they attempted to sail through the insanity of the storm around them, were three men. 

The first man, donned in a slick, red raincoat, sat at the bow of the boat, and was casually rowing through the stormy waves as if he’d done it a hundred times before. 

The second man, who was sat across from the first and facing towards him, wore a blue raincoat, and was chattering casually with the red-coated man about unrelated matters. 

And the third man, much older than the first two, sat at the back of the boat, with no raincoat to protect him from the storm, and was soaked through to the bone, terrified of what he’d gotten himself into.

The waves rose beneath the little boat like massive and engulfing mountains, pushing and pulling them every which way. The older man was being tossed and thrown about, and he had his hands gripped as tightly as possible on each side as he tried his hardest not to be thrown out of it and into the water. But the other two, in the raincoats, seemed completely unbothered by it all, and, quite frankly, actually seemed almost bored at the entire prospect of this situation.

“Are you going to just sit there?” The man in red asked, referring to the man in blue across from him, who was seated quite mannerly, with his hands in his lap and his legs crossed at the ankle and folded to the side in a very formal fashion. 

“As compared to what?” The man in blue asked, almost mockingly. The two had been bickering back and forth for hours now, like a married couple, or perhaps siblings. “Standing?” 

The man in red scoffed at him and shook his head. “Not standing.” He clarified. “Rowing.”

“Rowing.” The man in blue repeated, chuckling lightly to himself at the concept. “Well, I hadn't planned on it.” He said.

“Oh, so you expect me to shoulder the burden?” The man in red asked.

“No,” The man in blue snapped back. “But I do expect you to do all the _rowing_.”

The man in blue, who was sitting in front of the older man and faced away from him, suddenly turned around to him at the back and reached out his hand, which was holding a small, perfectly polished wooden box with a golden latch. He shoved it into the older man’s hands, and then turned back around without saying anything. 

The container was roughly the size of a shoe-box, or perhaps a music-box, and atop it, inscribed on a golden plaque, were the words: “Property of Henry Anderson; 7th Cavalry, Wounded Knee.”

“What's this?” The older man asked the blue man, confused and growing increasingly more nervous the longer he was with these two strangers who somehow seemed to know him, despite having claimed to have never met him before. The blue man didn’t answer though, and immediately turned back to his previous conversation.

“And why, exactly, am _I_ supposed to do all the rowing?” The red man asked, gesturing questioningly with his shoulders. The man in blue scoffed and brushed him off with a wave of his hand. 

“Because it was _your_ idea to come here.” He said, his words thick with condescension. 

The man in red’s mouth fell open dramatically. “ _My_ idea?” He asked.

“Yes.” The blue man said firmly. “I made it very clear that I don't believe in this experiment.” He explained.

The older man tuned them out and looked down at the box that now sat upon his lap. He had never seen it before, and so it being addressed as his own was quite alarming. Perhaps he had lost it in a drunken stupor and these two strangers had found it, now returning it to him and leading him on some wild-goose chase of blackmail and deceit with embarrassing and illegal memories from his past. 

The fact that his full first-name was printed at the top hinted that it must’ve been quite old, as he had abandoned that name years ago, now instead opting to go by his shorter, more casual nickname: _Hank_.

Henry Anderson was who he used to be, who he wished he had never been at all, and he’d left that life behind, long ago. Henry was his past, and Hank was his present, and he would much rather not remember the man that Henry had been, if he could even be called a man at all. 

But this man he was now, Hank, wasn’t much better, either, if he was being truly honest with himself. If he really were a better man now, he wouldn’t have needed to take this job. 

Perhaps these two strangers had dug into his past, opening doors to dark and violent places that he would’ve much preferred to keep closed, and as a result, now knew more about him than he was comfortable with. But they had come to him with an opportunity that he couldn’t refuse, and now, here he was, risking his life just to try and save it. Although, since he’d already allowed them to lead him to what could quite possibly be his burial at sea, he obviously must not value his life that greatly anyway.

Ten days ago, these two raincoated men in the boat – who were obviously twin brothers, both with golden blonde hair and light blue eyes – had mysteriously shown up to Hank’s office in the city, where he worked as a freelance investigator, and hired him on the spot for a hell of a lot of money – too much so to turn down – and offered to wipe away his lifelong debt entirely. 

Years of blowing money on horse races and booze, trying to wash out the memory of his life, had finally caught up to him, and his world had fallen into complete ruin. He was a lonely alcoholic living in a single-bedroom apartment above his office, only still working just to keep himself distracted from how much he didn’t want to be alive anymore. 

His wife had passed away in her early thirties from complications related to pregnancy, and the baby hadn’t made it. It would have been their only child, and now they have none. There’ll never be another…because she’s gone. Now, almost nineteen years later, he’s never found anyone else, never wanted anyone else, because he still wants her. She was everything, and so full of all the good and beautiful things about life. When the world was cruel and harsh, and it felt like all the happiness was fading away into total nothingness, she was always there to help him feel whole again. 

And then she was gone too. 

Maybe it was wrong of him to become this man. This man who can’t face himself in the mirror every day, this man who wastes _everything_ on bets that fall through, on alcohol that makes him forget who he was. But this was how he coped, and maybe it was a shitty way to be acting, but he didn’t know what else to do. And now it was all catching up to him. The money, the bills, the bets, his rapidly declining health – everything. 

Everything he’d built in his life was taken away in an instant, when she died. He put all his eggs in one basket, and when it fell, he had nowhere else to turn for happiness.

In exchange for the clearing of his ledger, and being paid enough money to start his life over, these two twin strangers had given him one single task. All he had to do was this: Locate a young man, named Connor, who lived in the airborne city known as Columbia, and transport him safely back down to Detroit. 

The city of Columbia was currently floating thousands of feet above the United States, and was propelled in the air by quantum levitational fields of physics, something similar to blimps or zeppelins, but with the strength to maintain the heavy stone and metal of an entire urban metropolis. It was never really clear to anyone how exactly this worked, as the inventers and scientists behind it never divulged those sorts of details, and since no concrete answers have ever been given, Columbia has become somewhat of a fairy tale to the people still down here on the ground. Most people have never even seen it, and many consider it to be quite divine of a place, if it even exists, and perhaps believe, instead, that maybe it is held up simply by the will of God. A city on a hill, so to speak, but in the sky. 

After years of construction, Columbia was completed in 1893, and ultimately seceded from the United States in 1902 after tensions grew to a boiling-point between them and the U.S. government. Columbia had developed its own sense of justice and purpose, mainly driven by the heavy incorporation of religion into everyday life, and quickly grew dissatisfied with their place in the United States. 

Columbia was highly exclusive, and gaining permanent residence became increasingly difficult in the years following its succession. Entrance was eventually limited almost entirely to individuals deemed economically valuable or socially significant, like celebrities or the extremely wealthy. 

Someone like Hank Anderson would never be able to afford to live there in his entire life. And since there were so few known photos of the place, he hadn’t even the slightest idea what the city may look like. Perhaps like Heaven, as many down here on Earth speculated it might. Those down here who dreamed of living in a place like that, but would never in a million years be important enough to be able to. 

“Excuse me. How much longer?” Hank asked, but the other two men still ignored him in favor of their own conversation. 

“One goes into an experiment knowing one could fail.” The red man said, enunciating every word for precise clarification of his thoughts.

“Maybe that’s true, but one also does not undertake an experiment knowing one _has_ failed already.” The blue man retorted. 

Since he received no answer, Hank looked back to the box on his lap, and then tentatively unhooked the golden latch and lifted the lid to find that the inside was filled with various old trinkets and photos, a few documents, a key, and at the very top – a pistol.

He picked up and examined the pistol first, as most people likely would have, given what it was, and flicked open the chamber to see if it was already loaded, and to his surprise, it was. He reclosed the chamber and placed it carefully back into the box, then sifted around to inspect what else had been packed inside. 

Beneath the gun was an aging, sepia-toned photo of a young man, likely in his late-teens or early twenties, with pale skin and dark-brown hair. The photo was only a profile-shot, so he was turned halfway away from the camera, and thus, his face was partially obscured from view.

Other noteworthy items included a small notecard with coordinates on it, leading back to Detroit, a bit of money (just enough to carry him through his trip), and a long, silver key with a black and white cameo carving on both sides of the top. One side depicting a bird, and the other, a cage.

On the inside lid of the box were two more pieces of paper, each one held to the surface at their four corners with bits of tape. 

On the left was a postcard with a photo of a golden statue of a boy with wings, the sun shining behind him in rays of light to give the impression of holiness. Two tiny, silhouetted people looked up at the statue from the bottom, and at the top of the card, the words “Monument Island” were printed above the boy’s head.

Then, on the right was a piece of ripped paper, with tiny pencil drawings on it of a scroll, key, and sword. The numbers “x1, x2, x2” were printed beside each one, respectively. 

Hank looked everything over for a moment, more confused now in seeing that none of this stuff was his own, yet was packed neatly in a box that he apparently had owned at some point. He wanted to ask, but he knew he would likely receive no answer, so instead he just put everything back where it had been, and re-closed the box. 

The two other men were still arguing as if this entire situation at sea were as normal as the commute to work every day.

“Can we just get back to the rowing?” The red man asked, obviously exasperated at the ridiculousness of the circles they were talking around one another.

“I suggest you do, or we're never going to get there.” The blue man said back, his arms crossed as he looked out at the crashing waters around them.

“No,” The red man said. “I mean I'd greatly appreciate it if you would assist me.”

The blue man scoffed. "Perhaps you should ask _him_.” He said. “I imagine he has a much greater interest in getting there than I do.”

“I suppose he does,” The red man agreed. “But…there's really no point in asking.” 

“And why is that?” The blue man asked.

“Because he doesn't row.” The red man said.

“He doesn't _row_?” The blue man asked.

“No. He _doesn’t_ row.” The red man said.

“Ah. I see what you mean.” The blue man laughed lightly at their apparent joke which had gone completely over Hank’s head, and then the two finally fell silent, obviously content that they’d come to somewhat of an agreement and were over their harmless bickering.

How these two men had found Hank in Detroit, he had no idea. His reputation was fair, but he wasn’t well-known, and they seemed to have sought him out specifically, which was strange as it was obvious that they were foreigners to the city, and would have had no way of knowing him. The way they dressed gave the impression that perhaps they were wealthy socialites from New York, living somewhere in East Egg in a lavish mansion on the bay.

The flow of available independent investigative work in Detroit was steady enough – if it could even be called investigative. Most people just tried to contract him under the table as a hired gun, knowing his decorated military background and hoping he could help them take care of things that needed taking care of. And even though he had vowed to become a better man, he still took those jobs, because money spoke truths that he could never bear to hear, made deals that he was too much of a coward to make, and he needed as much of it as he could get his hands on.

After being hired by these two, it had taken them all about three days to travel by train from Detroit to the town of Camden, which was right on the coast of Maine. Once there, they had rented the tiny wooden boat from a local fisherman and then set off at noon for a small island located miles away from the shore, past Penobscot Bay and way out into the Atlantic Ocean. 

The two men had informed Hank that he’d be able to enter Columbia from this island, but they hadn’t explained how exactly that was going to work. How in the world was he going to be able to get thousands of feet into the sky from an island out in the middle of the ocean? 

They gave no other details, and quite frankly, seemed to want to get this done as quickly as possible. And it wasn’t because it was time-dependent, Hank decided, but instead was because the two raincoated men gave the impression of being absolutely bored with the task, and seemed to want it to be over as soon as it could be so that they could move on to matters which they deemed more important. 

After they’d dropped this strange and borderline terrifying bomb on him, that they’d be riding out into the eye of the storm in a little wooden boat that looked like it would fall to pieces if somebody breathed too hard on it, Hank considered dropping the job and going back to Detroit. He could just thank them for their offer and politely decline, and then catch the next train back home. 

But he knew he wasn’t going to do that.

The bottom line was that he needed this money, really, really badly, and since he was already here, about to get into the boat, he decided that he was in too deep to back out now anyways. He was either going to finish this job and get paid, or he’d die trying, either possibility ending in peace for him. The peace of forgiveness, and a fresh start. Or the peace of death, the big sleep he’d never wake up from. Both were viable options.

In the distance, they suddenly came upon an incredibly small island, if it could even be called that at all, with a white lighthouse atop the stones of its ground. The beacon was turned off, and so they had been unable to see the building from afar. Protruding precariously from the side of the stone ground was a wooden dock, halfway fallen into ruin as the boards had been wettened by the water and rotted, as well as partially destroyed by the storm. It was obvious that nobody had been out here for a long time.

“We've arrived.” The red man said, and then rowed them over to the edge of the dock and stopped, where he then pulled the oars in and balanced them over his lap onto each side of the boat. Both raincoated men then reached out an arm to hold onto one of the pillars underneath the dock to hold the boat in place. 

Hank stayed in the boat for a moment, absolutely confused what was going on. The other men said nothing to him, and remained seated as if they were just waiting for him to get out, but weren’t going to make him do it until he decided to himself. 

He was seated the closest to the ladder on the dock, in what seemed deliberately planned by the red man who had been rowing, and so he decided he must be expected to get out. 

The wooden bars of the ladder were somewhat soft from the water, and gave the impression that they’d soon break if they were stepped on again. Hank climbed up quickly, but carefully, and then stood up on the dock, which made him extremely nervous as it creaked and moaned underneath him, threatening to drop into the sea any moment.

“Shall we tell him when we'll be returning?” The red man asked.

“Would that change anything?” The blue man said back.

“It might give him some comfort.” The red man said, and the blue man laughed dryly.

“At least that's something we can agree on.” The blue man said.

The two men pushed their boat away from the dock then, and began rowing again, heading back off into the storm. Hank rushed to the edge of the dock and watched them leave him behind.

“Hey!” He called, his voice obviously nervous and confused. “Is somebody meeting me here?” 

“I'd certainly hope so.” The red man called back sarcastically. “It does seem like a dreadful place to be stranded.”

Hank stood there and watched, open-mouthed, as the boat slowly disappeared back out into the storm, and then he was all alone. 

He turned back to the lighthouse and looked up at it. The sky was full of clouds, which covered the moon, and so the level of darkness was almost too much to navigate in, and he had no form of light to guide his way. The building could just barely be seen, and it was only possible to do so given that it was painted blindingly white, and was difficult to miss.

Hank held the wooden box snugly against his chest and then cautiously hurried across the dock and over to the safety of the island shore, careful with his steps so as to avoid falling through. 

Well, there really was no _shore_ on the island, at least not exactly. The whole isle was practically just a heap of crumbling rock face in the middle of the ocean, with a stone staircase built into the side which led up to the white lighthouse.

He stepped carefully up those stone stairs, which were slick from the water, and then approached a large set of wooden, double-doors at the base on the building.

Hank reached up a hand to knock – which may have been a useless gesture, given the isolated nature of where he was – but then stopped before his knuckles connected when he noticed a bloodied note nailed to the wood of the door beside him. 

The note read: “Anderson – Bring us the boy and wipe away the debt. THIS IS YOUR LAST CHANCE!”

His nerves were already shot, and his skin already chilled and shivering from the cold wetness of the rain – but if those feelings of fear and anxiety could’ve increased any more, they definitely did when he read that. Someone had been out here, someone who knew he was coming. But in a strange sort of way, he almost wasn’t surprised. It was like déjà vu, but not. More like a dream that couldn’t be remembered as being real or imagined. 

He wanted to hesitate, wanted to not open the door, but where would he go if he didn’t? Outside of here, there was nothing, and either he could stay out in the storm, or he could, at the very least, take shelter inside this building. So, he reached out his arm, grabbed the golden knob of the door and turned it, then pushed it in. 

On the other side, it opened up into a small circular room which was only just barely lit by a few stray candles burning in holders along the walls. In the center of the room, there was a large, green, metal pillar which extended all the way up to the top of the lighthouse, and was wrapped around by the metal spiral staircases leading upwards.

Immediately inside the door was a small wooden end-table pushed up against the metal pillar, which held a basin full of water on top, and one of the candles. Above the basin, hanging directly on the pillar, was a cross-stitched, embroidered poster which read, in black thread, “OF THY SINS, SHALL I WASH THEE.”

Hank approached the table apprehensively, and looked around to see that on the floor beside it was a towel, a change of clothes, and a black umbrella. He placed his wooden box onto the table and then leaned over the basin, hands on both sides of it. 

Looking inside, he locked eyes with his own reflection in the water, and saw that he looked as soaked as he felt, his long gray hair dripping water down his face and onto his clothes, which didn’t make much of a difference because his clothes were already equally as drenched. Since the room was so poorly lit, he couldn’t see much of himself other than his main features in a vaguely darkened silhouette. 

He reached into the basin with both hands and gathered up some of the water to rinse his face, and to his surprise, he found that it was fairly warm, despite being out here in the middle of nowhere, and felt good on his skin in contrast to the bitter cold of the storm outside. It warmed him up a little bit, and he felt his nerves ease a small amount as well. He took some more of the water and poured it over his arms and then a few more times on his face to savor the heat. 

When he was done rinsing off, he stripped out of his wet clothes and then dried his body off thoroughly with the towel from the floor. He twisted it around his hair to ring out the water, as well, and when he’d gotten out as much as he could, he neatly hung the towel off the side of the staircase banister.

He then moved to change into the clothes which had been lain out for him beside the basin, or at least, he assumed they were for him, since, upon unfolding them, he realized that they looked almost identical to the ones he had already been wearing. Actually, they might as well have been the exact same clothes, and how the hell they got out there, he had no idea. 

He may not be the most uniquely dressed person in the world, with his typically gray, business-casual attire, but he definitely didn’t just wear what everybody else did. He dressed for his job, and there weren’t a lot of private investigators in Detroit. Whoever put these here must’ve known he’d be coming, and, they knew what he usually wore.

Among the clothes, there was also a leather, two-shoulder gun holster harness, which he had apprehensively put on after he was dressed, unsure why it would have been lain out for him in this particular situation. Given everything else, though, it was obviously there for some specific reason, so he ended up just going along with it. Plus, it looked pretty cool, honestly, and that was reason enough to wear it. 

He tied his hair half-up in a bun when he was finished, the rest laying softly on his shoulders, and then took a final look into the basin and at the embroidered poster before picking the wooden box back up again, as well as grabbing the umbrella and tucking it under his arm, just in case. 

Aside from the table and basin, the rest of the room was virtually empty, so Hank then made his way to the metal staircase to head up to the next floor to see what else was inside this building. 

Upon stepping onto the stairs, they squeaked out in loud, metallic vibrations that echoed up through the tunneling structure of the lighthouse. He tried to step more carefully to keep the loud noises to a minimum, but no matter how softly he stepped, the stairs still protested his treading upon them. Along the left banister, he trailed his hand loosely as he made his way up, walking slowly and keeping his guard up, unsure of what exactly he may find here, or, what may find him. 

The stairs evened out onto another floor, similar to the one below, but this time there were many little desks and tables haphazardly shoved up all along the walls, like the space had been used for storage. Papers were thrown everywhere, and on one desk, there was a candlestick telephone not connected to anything, obviously unusable. 

There was less light here than downstairs, and no candles. The only way to see was from a single spotlight being shown onto a little wooden chair pushed up against the wall, and tied up to that chair was the presumably dead and beaten body of a young man, a bloody brown sack shoved his head and secured tightly around his neck. 

Beside him, there was a small, metal table with various bloodied tools on it, obviously having been used to torture the poor man until he died. The floor beneath him was stained with his blood, and there was a lot of it. 

Finally, on the chest of the dead body, a handwritten sign had been leaned up against him on his lap, and it read, in dried blood: “DON’T DISAPPOINT US.”

Hank felt this heart lurch in his throat when he saw it, and he wanted to gag, not from disgust, but from the pure depravity and disturbance of the scene. He’d seen bodies before, given his line of work, so this wasn’t something he was unused to, but, damn if this wasn’t fucking insane.

“Oh, Jesus, fuck…” He whispered to himself, taking in the scene and visibly cringing. What a shitty way to go out, he thought. Was that message directed at _him_? 

The body didn’t smell yet, so it must’ve been recent. Whoever lit the candles and warmed the water must’ve also had something to do with this, Hank thought. But, if all that were true, then how did they manage to do all of this and then vacate the island before Hank showed up? Unless they were still here, which seemed unlikely given how few hiding places there were.

There was nothing he could do for the man, and it wasn’t his business anyway...well, he hoped it wasn’t, and he just resigned to move on past this room, and continue on upwards. Whatever the deal was with this body, he didn’t want to know, and didn’t care to know. His job was to find the boy and then get home. He didn’t want to think about anything else. 

The next set of stairs ascended quite some way further up than the first set had, and after twisting around that metal pillar maybe three more times or so, it finally opened out onto the roof landing, which circled around the lighthouse beacon, encased behind a glass wall. The outer edge of the landing was closed off by a black, metal railing to keep people from falling off the side.

Hank approached the edge and looked out over the enormity of the ocean, taking in the sights and the sounds of the sea and the storm.

A bit of rain misted over him, but not enough to be bothersome, as the landing was covered overhead by the lighthouse roof. The rain was letting up a bit, and hit the roof with a soft clattering sound, less like bullets now and more so like quick drips into a sink from a faucet just barely left on. The smell of the ocean was everywhere, fishy but not entirely unpleasant, mixed with salty spray and unseen soils. The loneliness of the location was almost peaceful, like there was a strange sort of tranquility in being somewhere where virtually no one knew you were. 

In the far distance, through the rain and fog, the light from the town of Camden, where they had rented the boat, could just barely be seen along the horizon. Hank wondered if the two men who brought him here were on their way back still, or if they had finally been overwhelmed by the thundering waves of the ocean, and pulled underneath its tides, drowned and forgotten.

Hank lightly trailed his hand along the railing, alternating between gazing vaguely out into the water and then looking the opposite way at the lighthouse beacon behind the glass, trying to see if he could find a way in. 

Behind the glass, he couldn’t make out much of anything, as it was too dark inside without any lights, and so he approached it and cupped his hands around his eyes against the glass, wooden box and umbrella both secured under his arms. 

Inside the little room, there was actually no beacon at all, and instead there was only a single, red barber-shop looking chair sitting in the center, attached to the floor by some sort of circular, metal contraption.

At the very end of the landing, there was what appeared to be a metal door, which had a replica statue of that same boy from the postcard attached to its surface, this time silver, with his wings extended overtop three brass bells. From left to right, the bells had carvings on them of a scroll, a key, and a sword. 

Hank walked over to the door and inspected the bells and statue carefully for a moment, running his hand along the curves and corners of it, feeling the texture of the design against his skin, and then trailing down and lightly tapping one of the bells – the one with the key – to see what would happen. But nothing did. 

He paused for a moment, confused and trying to understand, before suddenly remembering the little piece of ripped paper from inside the box. He pulled the box out from under his arm and opened it up, studying the numbers next to each of the drawings. 

The scroll had a one next to it, so he rung that bell once. 

The key had a two next to it, so he rung that bell twice. 

And the sword had a two next to it as well, so he rung that one twice again. 

For a second, nothing happened, and Hank wondered if he had not followed the instructions correctly, but then, out of the sky, a deep, thick foghorn sound rung out from nowhere, like whales echoing underneath the water. The sound came five times, each time with a few seconds pause in-between, and matched the notes from the bells at a much deeper octave. The clouds turned red and sent down rays of scarlet light upon each note being played. 

And then it stopped, and the door into the room slid open with a shrill, creaking sound, like two pieces of metal scraping painfully against one another as they passed by. The sounds from the sky had been deep, and booming, but hadn’t been audibly distressful. These door sounds were like nails on a chalkboard.

Inside, it smelled like it hadn’t been opened in a long time, like the room had been completely forgotten in time and left sealed-up for decades. It was stuffy and quite difficult to breathe upon first entering, filled with stale air and dust from years of being here, completely untouched. 

Hank stepped in cautiously and looked around the room for a moment, the metal floor echoing with each step he took, and it was obvious that that metal beneath him was the only thing separating him from this room and the rest of the lighthouse. 

He sat down in that red chair almost immediately, but he didn’t know why. It just felt right to do it, and he didn’t even hesitate, like somewhere deep down, he knew that this was what he was supposed to do. And as soon as he did so, metal cuffs shot out of the chair and around his wrists, ankles, and waist, securing him tightly and bounding him there. 

“What the fuck!?” He called, and tried pulling out of his bindings, but there was no way out. They were locked down tightly around his body and barely allowed any room for movement. He could feel the metal of the cuffs cutting into him, and he tried to relax so he didn’t get cut. 

The wooden box of mementos and the umbrella sat unsecured on his lap, and he tried to move his legs so that they wouldn’t tumble down onto the floor beneath him. 

From a speaker somewhere in the room, a woman’s voice came through, issuing him orders as he sat strapped to the chair.

“Make yourself ready, pilgrim. The bindings are there to act as a safeguard.” She said, her voice flat, obviously recorded and not backed up by an actual person on the other side. 

Metal sections of wall rose from all sides of the room and folded up around him in the chair, locking him into what seemed to be a small rocket, perhaps. He wasn’t claustrophobic, but nobody would want this to happen, to be trapped in a little metal box while strapped to a chair. 

“Ascension in the count of five...” She said, and Hank felt his heart drop. He closed his eyes and gripped the ends of the arms of the chair, holding on for dear life, closing his eyes and praying that this thing wasn’t about to shoot into the sky. 

“Count of four…”

The chair tipped forward slowly then, and the floor opened up beneath him. He could see the fires at the bottom of the rocket and was sure for a moment that he was going to fall to a burning death, but then remembered that he was strapped down and couldn’t move. The umbrella and box of mementos fell from his side and down into the pit and he cussed at the loss of the objects. 

“Three…”

The chair tipped back up, the floor reclosing beneath him, and he realized that that had been intentionally done so that any extra objects he had on his person would be lost, probably as a precaution against bringing weapons up into the city. 

“Two…”

He held his breath and squeezed his eyes shut, trying to steady himself so he could stay calm during the impact of being shot through the sky. He slowly let out the breath, nodding his head slightly to try and reassure himself that he would be okay. 

“One…”

And then all at once, everything shot up at what felt like a thousand miles an hour. Every part of his body felt like he was being sucked through a wind-tunnel and was shaking him down to the core, all the way to the bones beneath his skin and back again. His blood felt like it wasn’t in place inside of him anymore, and instead had been left behind in that lighthouse tower. He felt empty, like all the energy had been sucked out of him and now he was running on pure adrenaline. 

“Ascension…ascension…”

He could barely hear the voice of the woman anymore because of the insanity of what was happening, blood pounding in his ears and through his skull in shockwaves of energy. He was afraid to open his eyes and his breathing was completely erratic as he tried to will himself to calm down. His hands were still gripped tightly around the ends of the chair’s arms and he felt like he was being held down by the weight of a thousand hands.

“Five thousand feet…” 

The metal bindings around his wrists dug harshly into his skin and he could tell that they were going to end up bruising him, and the belt holding him around his waist felt like it was cutting off his circulation as it pulled him down roughly with the pressure of the air all around him.

“Ten thousand feet…”

His eyes shot open when he suddenly felt the shuttle slow down slightly, as if the rockets propelling them upwards had been shut off, and now the craft was merely shooting through the air on sheer momentum alone. Outside the little window in front of him was a mass of dark clouds, the storm still raging through the skies, lightning shooting down and landing unseen in the waters below.

“Fifteen thousand feet…”

The craft slowed again, and felt like it dropped slightly for almost a second, before entering into a mass of clouds that covered the window entirely. For a few seconds, there was nothing except the gray darkness of those masses outside, and he thought that maybe he was dead. He blinked a few times to see if anything changed, but there was nothing. The rocket continued to shoot through the sky still, and he had this sinking feeling that he was about to be dropped. 

And then, it all changed. 

Emerging suddenly out of the top of the clouds like champagne shooting out of a bottle, the rocket popped out from over those dark masses into what looked like Heaven.

“Hallelujah.” The woman said, her voice flat but taking the words right out of Hank’s mouth. He let out a long breath and felt his heartrate decline somewhat, though he still felt like he was going to need to be resuscitated after all of that. He’d never felt so terrified in his life. 

Outside that window was the most beautiful thing Hank thought he had ever seen in his life. The sky was a breathtaking orange-yellow color, possibly mid-afternoon now, and the aura of it all immediately calmed Hank’s nerves significantly. It was like being inside of the feeling of a candle, warm and protected, like nothing bad could ever touch you again. Like this was a world entirely untouched by hands unclean.

Out there, sitting atop dozens of white, billowy clouds like cotton were hundreds of neoclassical-style buildings, light red brick and mortar, with accents of pristine whiteness, perfectly arranged in the sky like a child’s dollhouse. Between many of the clouds were intricate, floating bridges built to connect them for easy travel between different places. American flags were placed upon the tops of many buildings, and wove gracefully in the wind in a sea of red, white, and blue.

The sight of this place was like a World’s Fair exhibition, and seemed to have been built to look as pure and Heavenly as possible. It was like a renaissance painting come to life in the form of an urban metropolis, built to perfection and well beyond its years. This place didn’t exist in 1912. It existed out of time, in its own alternate universe, Hank decided. There was no way that anything this beautiful could actually be real. 

Zeppelins and balloons floated past the shuttle in the sky, and zipped every which way, heading about their business between the different cloud formations. Birds flew past the window in waves of v-formations, swimming through the air like it was water and then jetting off to various locations. 

On one of the buildings, the shuttle went by a large billboard which read “Father Kamski, Our Prophet,” accompanied by a painting of a young man with long brown hair and a short beard across his lower face, who was wearing what was obviously a conservative set of light blue and white dress robes with a collar that covered his neck. Behind his head was a circular and holy representation of the sun, with lines of yellow light radiating off of it. He looked serious, but warm, like a stern father, and his hair was down upon his shoulders, almost as if he wanted to appear like Jesus.

Then, in the distance, centered perfectly among the rest of the architecture, Hank saw that statue of the golden boy with his wings, appearing to have been designed to resemble an angel to watch over the people who lived here. His arms were raised slightly and extended outwards to give off the feeling off being welcomed into the space. The sun was shining directly above his head, almost like a spherical halo of light.

This was the city of Columbia.


	2. Baptism

The shuttle glided airily through the sky, the flaming rockets from beneath the craft now turned off, and their propelling strength replaced by the hold of a parachute attached to the roof which was unseen to Hank. It seemed to be descending now, and was slowly floating straight downwards back to the safety of the ground, or at least as much “ground” as this place was capable of, given that it was made almost entirely of clouds. 

What appeared to be parading floats held up by blimps with whirligigs and engines were hovering in horizontal formation around the city, designed with the most beautiful and colorful scenes of historical figures from what Hank assumed must be Columbia’s history. 

From outside the window, Hank could hear what sounded like the crooning crowd of a festival, fireworks booming in soft bursts, and music playing faintly in the distance. Even from inside his air-tight shuttle, he almost felt that maybe he could just barely smell the scent of popcorn cooking, or maybe he only imagined that he could, because he was expecting to. 

Something must have been going on today, he thought, maybe a holiday or a summer fair, perhaps. The odds of him showing up on a day like today were slim, and how apropos that he would leave an Earthly storm just to enter this beautiful new Eden in the sky. It was already enough to make him want to stay forever, despite admittedly not being a religious man.

The rocket slowed down then as it approached an absolutely beautiful, white stone church upon a hill, which overlooked the rest of the city. 

Hank didn’t know if there was any God watching over the world, and the way that his life had gone so far had led him more so to believe that there wasn’t…but he had to admit: This place was holy. Whoever designed and built this city had to have seen _something_ , had some kind of godly vision of Heaven or Paradise. He’d never seen anything like this place before, and none of the designs or architecture were familiar to him. Everything here was like being born again for the first time.

A soft landing came then, onto a circular, metallic platform at the very peak of the church, above the bell-tower, which provided a generous view of the city all around it. The statue of the boy with wings was visible in the distance, centered perfectly in the middle of the window for Hank to see.

Slowly, the platform that the shuttle had handed on began to descend, straight down into the church, now attached to some kind of elevator-like, pulley system. The wires and gears wailed softly in metallic moans as they held the weight of the rocket and transported it down into the building.

Down through the building, Hank watched out the window as he passed through the clock tower, past the infrastructure of the pillars and beams, with the gears and doohickeys of the whole edifice able to be seen as they moved and turned, holding up the weight of the shuttle.

Along the walls inside the tower, golden verses of what seemed to be a religious nature were lit up tastefully like a marquee, upon white stone ribbon-banners, and Hank read them through the window as he went down.

_“Why would he send his savior unto us,_  
_If we will not raise a finger for our own salvation?_  
_And though we deserved not his mercy,_  
_He has led us to this New Eden._  
_A last chance for redemption.”_

Once the words had faded from view, the shuttle entered into a dark part of the tower, which blocked his view out the window with a steel wall, and for a few moments, he could see nothing at all except the faint outline of screws and gears along that steel. He must’ve been moving underground.

From below, echoing throughout the tunnel he was now descending through, Hank thought that he could just faintly hear the sounds of people singing in unison, like a choral choir. It was one of the most beautiful things he’d ever heard, like angels in Heaven. 

He may not have been religious, but damn if this place wasn’t divine as Hell. 

The shuttle finally passed out of the tunnel then, and moved down into a hugely cavernous, open room which greatly resembled the inside of a church...well, if said church had been intricately built underground inside of a cave, almost like a mausoleum. Along all the walls were elaborate and colorful stained-glass portraits of that same man from before, _Father Kamski_ , depicted in various, religiously-centered situations.

Finally, the shuttle came to a smooth, yet quite noisy stop onto the floor of the room, and when it touched down, the sound of water being disturbed could be heard echoing through the underground building he was now in.

As soon as the rocket had settled onto the floor, the bindings around Hank’s wrists, ankles, and waist popped open and slid back into the chair where they had come from. He immediately grabbed his wrists and rubbed them lightly, trying to soothe the discomfort that the bindings had caused. They hadn’t cut into him, thankfully, but his wrists were definitely sore from the pressure. 

The metal door with the window raised up slowly and silently, and opened him back up to the world around him for the first time since he was back at the lighthouse.

When he stood up from the chair, he almost couldn’t steady himself on two feet again, and he had to stand as still as possible for a few seconds in order to regain his balance on firm ground. His legs felt like they were asleep, unable to feel anything, but yet also felt incredibly sensitive to every nerve inside of them. 

He was about to step out of the craft, then, but realized that the floor was covered in about a foot of water, so he quickly pulled his boots off, and then rolled up the bottoms of his pant legs so that they wouldn’t get wet. 

Despite being underground, the entire cavern smelled amazing, almost like it had been filled with rose water. White water lilies and candles floated all around in the water, water which glimmered like liquid gold from the shimmering reflections of light from the tiny fires of the candles. That light in the water then gleamed up onto the white, concrete-bricked walls in fluid, ethereal motions. 

The gospel singing could be heard much more clearly now, and resonated harmoniously throughout the room in floods of sound, like someone calling out from afar to a coma victim, lost in the machinations of their own mind. 

Hank realized then that he actually recognized the song, and it had been one that he’d heard sung in the streets of Detroit occasionally by street preachers and choral groups. It was a popular Christian hymn, _“Will the Circle be Unbroken?”_

Despite that, though, he’d never in his life heard it sound like this before. Never heard _anything_ sound this divine, and if he had to choose one more thing to hear before he died, maybe this wouldn’t be such a bad choice. 

Directly in front of him was an enormous, floor-to-ceiling sized stain-glass window, lit from behind by an unseen source of light, which depicted this “Father Kamski” standing on a scenic, grassy hill, illuminated from behind by a sky full of heavenly sunlight, his loyal followers standing all around and praying up to him. He was dressed almost like a shepherd, and was pointing to a golden city, floating in the sky, obviously representing Columbia. 

Beside the glass, on each side, were gray statues of winged women, like angels, with raised swords, and below them were dozens of candles lain out upon a raised section of the floor, alongside three wooden pews meant for sitting and praying. 

To Hank’s right, there was a waterfall fountain cascading down the wall, seemingly meant to have coins flipped into it for good luck and prayers. Hank wasn’t sure if he believed coins for luck could actually accomplish anything, but he knew that everybody had their own little things that they did to help them sleep at night, and he couldn’t fault them for that.

To his left, there was a small flight of stairs heading down deeper into the undercroft, and Hank made his way down them, boots held loosely in his hands.

Right at the bottom of the steps, about five-feet away, was a more than moderately-sized concrete statue of Father Kamski, which took up the entire center of the room, and was surrounded by even more candles. His arms were raised and open in welcome, and above him, on a white plaque, shaped like a ribbon-banner, were the words:

THE SEED OF THE PROPHET  
SHALL SIT THE THRONE,  
AND DROWN IN FLAME  
THE MOUNTAINS OF MAN.

Whoever this guy was, Hank thought, he must think pretty highly of himself. Dressing up like Jesus and presenting himself as some second-coming of Christ to these people who just ate right out of the palm of his hand. 

More stairs led off to the right, behind the statue, and to the left, there was another room, similar to the one that Hank had first entered after exiting the shuttle. He walked over to the entrance of that room to have a quick look around.

Inside, there were lines of wooden pews faced towards another stained-glass portrait, this time of a woman with dark brown hair, possibly middle-aged, who was wearing an ornate, royal blue gown, her hands clasped politely behind her back. Gray statues of praying women were beside the portrait, and there was a podium set up on a raised bit of floor beneath her, surrounded by candles. Lit braziers of fire hung low from the ceilings on brass chains. At the glass-woman’s feet, there was another banner, which read: 

AND IN MY WOMB SHALL GROW  
THE SEED OF THE PROPHET.

After peering inside, Hank turned away, and instead headed straight for the stairs, not particularly interested in investigating that room further. Well, he _was_ interested, actually, incredibly so, but he also knew that he wasn’t here for sight-seeing, and that he had a job to do. Any extra time spent gawking at portraits of old women would only cost him money.

Standing beside the archway which led to the stairs, there was a young blonde boy, perhaps in his teen years, dressed in perfectly white robes, which were floating in the water at the bottom. His eyes were closed, and his hands were clasped in prayer as he whispered quietly to himself.

“Excuse me,” Hank called softly, not meaning to disturb the boy, who was obviously having a quiet moment to himself. “Where am I?” He asked. 

The boy looked up at him with a big smile, teeth as white as porcelain, hands still clasped together, and said, “Heaven, friend! Or, at least as close as we can be, until Judgement Day.” He laughed emptily at his joke, and then his face fell and he returned to his prayers. 

Hank nodded awkwardly, and then rubbed the back of his neck. Alright, he thought, guess asking for help wasn’t going to get him anywhere. He passed the boy, then, and headed down the stairs, which twisted in a spiral, and were encased in white, stone walls.

Inside the stairwell, along the walls, were more glass windows, much smaller than the larger portraits, and each of them portrayed holy representations of the scroll, the key, and the sword. Whatever these things meant, they must’ve been important, since they’d shown up in the lighthouse as well, but Hank still couldn’t figure out what the hell they were for.

The bottom of the stairs opened up into another room with a stained-glass portrait, just like the first two. 

This one depicted three people: Father Kamski, the older woman with the blue dress, and a baby boy, who had dark brown hair and orange-brown eyes. Kamski was holding the baby and looking down upon him as though he were the sun, and the woman had her arms wrapped lightly around the man’s shoulders. The baby was lit up from behind to appear divine and luminous, and he was loosely wrapped up in a little white blanket. Below the portrait, it read:

THE LAMB: THE FUTURE OF OUR CITY

On a raised platform beneath the glass, there were baskets full of toys and stuffed animals, trinkets and knick-knacks, all seemingly left as offerings for the boy. More brass braziers hung from the ceilings, lit with golden flame. 

Hank was surprised that this so-called _Prophet_ was even allowed to have children, since most religions required their figureheads to be chaste and abstinent, to appear pure and void of mortal desires. Maybe the man had convinced his followers that the baby had descended from Heaven in a ray of light, as the portrait seemed to portray. 

Then, to the side, Hank headed down more stairs out of the room, and at the bottom, finally reached what seemed to be the ground floor of the building, down into a cavernous hall with especially high ceilings, which were held up by thick, stone pillars connected by intricately designed archways. On each pillar, there were more of the gray angel statues, this time with their hands raised into the air. 

The room was organized into rows, like a swimming pool, and were separated by lines of hundreds of candles, which were organized in linear bunches. 

As Hank walked down his row, he looked up to see that the angel’s raised hands formed an arch over his head, similar to knights who raise their swords over someone’s head as they walk beneath them. In the other rows, more people dressed in white robes walked slowly through the water, heading in the same direction as Hank, their eyes closed and hands clasped in prayer. 

Then, at the very end of Hank’s row, a circle of those white-robed people stood, all of them surrounding an older man, who was robed in black and giving a sermon. Behind the man was a circular tunnel which had light shining through at the very end, and seemed to open out into some kind of green-grassed area. 

Beside the tunnel were more angel statues, and above them, on another stone ribbon-banner, it read:

THE PATH OF FORGIVENESS IS  
THE ONLY WAY TO THE CITY.

Again, Hank was afraid to disturb the group of people, but seeing as there was nobody else around to ask, and no obvious other way out of the building, he knew that he would have to. 

He tentatively reached up his left hand to a man standing in the circle, and the man immediately turned around to him, but said nothing. Hank was about to speak, to ask for directions, but then, Hank realized that everyone in the circle had stopped what they were doing and turned to him. All of them were slowly distancing themselves from Hank and clearing a path straight to the center, to the man in black, probably a preacher. The man was turned towards Hank, no longer giving his sermon, and had his hands held politely in front of him.

“Is this someone new?” The man asked, gesturing towards Hank. His voice was velvety and thick, lilting and easily persuasive. “Someone from the Sodom below? Newly come to Columbia to be washed clean, before our Prophet, our Founders, and our Lord?”

Hank shook his head. “No, I-I just need to get into the city.” He said, and gestured to the tunnel behind, which likely was the exit. 

The man laughed deeply, and the others in the circle joined him, but Hank didn’t understand what was funny. 

“Hah! Get into the city?” The preacher mocked sarcastically, as if that was the most ridiculous request he had ever heard. The people around Hank continued to laugh while they stared at him, and he suddenly felt very self-conscious, like they were all in on some joke that he had no part of. 

Hank swallowed awkwardly and gripped his boots at his side, unsure of what to do. He had no idea what was going on, and he’d only been to church a few times in his life, so he felt extremely out of his element here.

After his wife had passed away, he’d tried going to church, but it just never did anything for him. No matter how much he prayed, she wasn’t going to come back, and being there only reminded him that she was gone. He just wasn’t one to talk about his problems, instead opting to just pretend they didn’t exist, so he stopped going. 

The preacher finally finished laughing at Hank’s innocent confusion, and then he held out his arms and gestured down at the water below their feet.

“Brother,” He said, though Hank heard no tone of kinship in the man’s voice. “The only way to get into Columbia is through rebirth in the sweet waters of baptism.”

Baptism… _right_. He’d never done that before, either. 

“Will you be cleansed, brother?” The man asked, dramatically gesturing around him as though they were on a stage, being watched by hundreds, his voice firm and authoritative. He extended his right hand out to Hank, then, and waited for him to take it. 

Hank didn’t want to accept, but he also didn’t _not_ want to. It was either this or turn around and get back on that rocket, and that wouldn’t get him anywhere. Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad, he thought; maybe this was what he needed. A fresh start.

The people in the circle were calling words of encouragement to him, urging him to accept the baptism. 

He weighed his options quickly in his mind, feeling nervous that he was being watched right now, and ultimately, this seemed like the only one that tipped the scale. So he did it. 

He approached the preacher slowly, descending down a few steps and into the water, which was at a much higher level here than it had been anywhere else, and went up just past his knees. 

He reached out his right hand to meet the other man’s and they clasped them together. The man pulled Hank close.

“I baptize you,” He declared. “In the name of our Prophet, in the names of our Founders, in the name of our Lord! And so, make him born again, into the bosom of Columbia!”

While he was speaking, the man abruptly pushed Hank under the water and held him down, hand pressed over his face, not having given him enough time to take a breath before he went under. 

The preacher pulled him out again after a few seconds and Hank took a few short breaths in, trying to steady himself as his hair dripped down his face, now soaked. He reached up to push it back out of his face.

The preacher stared at Hank and studied him, right hand still gripped firmly on Hank’s shoulder, and then smirked ever so slightly. 

“Well, I don’t know, brothers and sisters,” He said dramatically, and turned halfway to the crowd to speak to them, who were cheering and calling out words of encouragement. “But, this one doesn’t look clean enough to me.” 

And then he pushed him under again, holding down his face under the water and shoving him down to the bottom of the bath. Hank felt his back touch the stones of the floor and then he could feel pressure on his chest as the priest knelt down on top of his body so that he couldn’t move. 

Hank struggled to hold his breath and then accidentally opened his mouth, bringing water into his throat. He coughed in reflex but that only made it worse. 

The preacher continued to hold him down, and Hank tried to move around, but felt that he couldn’t. It had only taken a few seconds for his body to feel totally numb, and he didn’t understand why. The oxygen flow to his brain cut off almost immediately, way more quickly than it should’ve, and he couldn’t think straight anymore. 

Unable to do anything else, he squeezed his eyes shut. 

And waited for it to end.

* * * * *

Knocks. Hasty, impatient knocks pounding on a door like screaming, calling out to whoever was inside, crying in pain as they were being tortured. Or maybe someone really was screaming, far away, echoing in from the distance. An excruciating thumping that pulsated like a heart and felt like somebody was playing around with a drill inside his head. 

_His_ head. 

_Hank._

He was just lying there, absolutely wasted and passed out at his desk inside his private office in Detroit, head down flat on the surface of the wood, using his arms as a cushion lain overtop important paper documents and money ledgers, tickets and forms. Beside his head was a loaded pistol, as well as a nearly empty cigarette carton and an ashtray, where a light strain of smoke drew up into the air in spirals from a recently tapped out cigarette. 

Empty glass bottles of liquor and beer littered the desk and floor around him in lament of an alcoholic’s menagerie. The room looked as though a storm had rushed through, tossing everything about in a tornado of office supplies, or perhaps the window had been left open on a windy day and everything and been blown around and then left in a mess. Or maybe he just never cared to clean.

It was a depressing scene, muted and gray, the room floored in aging, hardwood, the walls covered in peeling, flowered wallpaper. The space was mostly empty, save for Hank’s desk and a few stray tables holding boxes of documents and folders, case files and old records. In the right corner, near the door, was a rusty, metal furnace, its flames long since burned out, but that smell of the burning wood from it lingered still, vaguely musty and mixed with cigarette smoke.

All along the walls were framed displays of his various awards and achievements from his time in the military, their glass covers now dusty with age and forgotten among the mess of everything else. They were like tombstones hung on the wall, the only physical reminders of a life lived in memory. The rest of the scars were emotional, eating away at his insides like a disease.

On the wall to the right of Hank’s desk, there was a closed, gray door from which faint sounds of muffled cries could be heard, distant, as though they were being stifled underwater. The door may have been right next to him, but it felt miles away, as though it were lost at the end of a hallway that grew infinitely longer the further he ran down it. 

There was no color here, like an old crime noir film, or the Wizard of Oz world pre-tornado…or perhaps it was because this place truly was just entirely devoid of happiness, and thus, color. It wasn’t truly black and white, but it gave off that same kind of feeling of being eternally stuck in time as the world continued on without you. 

The knocking continued to beat rapidly on the door, and whoever was behind the sound seemed furious, like they’d been knocking for hours and had yet to receive an invite inside.

Hank could barely bring himself to full consciousness, and his head felt like it was suctioning in on itself, like it was breathing in and out and squeezing his brain with every pulsating rush of blood. Every bone weighed of heavy stone inside of him, dragging his muscles and skin down like bricks, and keeping him firmly sat in his office chair. 

“Who's there?” Hank called, words slurred significantly, his voice loud and annoyed. “What do you want?”

The knocks continued to boom louder, and louder, so much so that they seemed to send vibrational tremors through the entire room, rumbling through the floors and walls and up to the ceiling, demanding to shake it to the ground. A shrill, distorted sort of voice came from behind the door then – a man’s – and it sounded like multiple people were talking at once and all saying the same thing.

“BRING US THE BOY, AND WIPE AWAY THE DEBT!”

The words shot around in his head like a pin-ball machine, but left no impact. This wasn’t a request he hadn’t already heard a hundred times before, and he couldn’t care less what they wanted from him. They hadn’t let him be in weeks, and every day was the same thing, coming here to hassle him until he gave in. 

He moved his arms out from underneath his head and then pressed his forehead onto the firm wood of the desk, breathing deeply out of his nose to try and catch his breath, to try and pull himself into the moment. 

But he wasn’t there…he wasn’t anywhere. He didn’t know where he was, and he wasn’t conscious enough to be spatially aware. He drank because he didn’t want to be present in his body, didn’t want to remember who he was then, or…who he was now.

“WE HAD A DEAL, HANK!” They called, still beating ruthlessly on the door and demanding the man inside come to open it. 

In the back of his mind, his subconscious, maybe, Hank felt fear. True, unadulterated fear at the calling of his name under such intensive circumstances, mixed with the uncharacteristic rage that being drunk caused him. He may not like who he became when he drank, but at least he didn’t have to be consciously aware of who that man was, since he was too out of it to fully grasp what was happening.

He lifted his head up just barely, and peered upwards at the front door, which was only about ten feet from the front of his desk, but felt like a hundred.

The door was wooden, with a frosted glass window set into the top half, and the words, “Hank Anderson; Investigations into Matters Both Public and Private,” printed on its front in black ink, which appeared backwards to Hank through the glass from his position on the inside of the room.

“I told you…” Hank said. “I'm not gonna do it.” He tilted his head up and leaned his chin on the desk, then continued to sit there, staring up at the door, but not really seeing, just waiting for them to give up and leave him alone.

“OPEN THIS DOOR, RIGHT NOW!”

Hank sighed deeply and then abruptly pushed away from his desk, his chair scraping noisily along the wooden floor beneath him as he moved it. He stood up, then, and walked unsteadily over to the front door and leaned on the wall beside it, trying to balance himself against the sturdy surface. He crossed his arms over his chest, and then leaned towards the door to speak.

“Go away, I’m not taking the fucking deal…” He said, his voice surprisingly composed, yet still verifiably weak and tired. He felt then that maybe he needed to throw-up, as standing up so suddenly had jostled his brain around even more so than it had already been, and nausea shivered in cold waves over his body, down his back like a fever chill and up his throat.

“MR. ANDERSON!” They yelled, voice demonic and resonating through Hank’s whole body like the chills of a fever, and continued banging on the door like their life depended on it. It didn’t even sound like a person’s fist anymore; it sounded like they were slamming into it with a battering ram. 

“Leave me alone!” Hank called back, trying to assert that he wasn’t going to give in to them, that he wasn’t afraid. But he was…and deep down, he knew they’d never leave him be. They’d be on him until the day he died if he didn’t give them what they wanted.

“MR. ANDERSON!” They yelled again, callously pounding on the door to show him that they weren’t backing down. Hank covered his ears and leaned his forehead on the wall, praying to God or whoever was out there watching over him to make it all stop, to make them go away and leave him in the quietness of his drunken bedlam. 

Stabbing pains shot through his skull like the blows of a knife to his brain, and he tried to put pressure on his head to distract himself from the feeling, the booming closing in around him and almost bringing him to his knees in total submission. His heart was beating furiously just to keep him alive and carry him through what was probably a panic-attack, his breath having escaped him entirely. The only air left to take in was thick and stale, heavy from the weight of the room, like it hadn’t been filtered out into the open air or refreshed in a very long time.

The skin on the topside of his right hand burned like somebody was carving into his flesh with a blade, spelling something out into his skin in excruciating detail, but when he glanced down to look at what was happening, his vision was too blurred to see it. He could feel the blood running down his hand, and then dripping down his arm and onto the floor. 

And then, all at once, it stopped.

His head cleared, the pounding ceased, and the knocking desisted. Not even the footsteps of the intruder at the door could be heard. There was sudden, absolute nothingness. Quiet, and peace. 

He lowered his hands from his head, his body no longer shaking as it had been, and stood up straight. He held up his right hand to look at it and there was nothing there. No cuts, or bruises, no carvings or scars. The pain and nausea had subsided entirely, and he felt total bliss. But not in a tranquil way. It was more like suddenly, all emotion had faded from him, like he couldn’t feel at all.

Like he’d died. 

He faced the door then, and reached his left hand out for the doorknob, turning it with a slight creak that provided the only sound to the now unnervingly quiet room, aside from his anxious breathing.

But what he saw outside could never be taken back from his memory.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The song that the choir were singing throughout the underground church was called "Will the Circle be Unbroken?" and I have linked it below in case anyone is interested in listening.
> 
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H4cWPKRhwIc


	3. The Raffle of 1912

Everything was blue, when he opened his eyes again. 

The sky, he saw, as he lay softly there on his back upon the warm, green grass of a garden. White clouds like cotton candy sailed gaily above him, and a few birds passed through his line of sight, here and there, going about their daily business, chirping to one another in indecipherable conversation.

The smells of lilac and rose and jasmine filled the air, almost too sweet to the nose, but just enough so to be pleasant. And then, that popcorn smell came again, wafting into the garden from over its neatly hedged walls. 

He lay there unmoving for a few moments, relishing in the moment of calm and soaking up the feeling of the sun on his damp skin and clothes, which were still a little wet from the baptism.

The baptism. 

It was _real._

He hadn’t drowned, and instead had been floated down the river tunnel by the priest and out into this garden, where someone must’ve then pulled him up out of the water and lain him onto the grass. 

He wasn’t sure how long he’d been out, but given that his clothes were almost nearly dried, he assumed that maybe he had been laying there for around two hours or so. The sun was in a different spot in the sky, and was now slightly closer to the horizon, to show that time had passed.

When he sat up, he was met with the most extravagantly tended garden he’d ever seen in his life, with dozens of species of flowers neatly bedded in the soil around him, trees and bushes skillfully carved into the shapes of various animals, and another beautiful and mysterious angel statue presiding over the whole area. 

Ladders had been placed upon some of the tree’s trunks, and gardeners were standing up on them with hedge clippers, trimming the trees branches. Women in flowey, white dresses were lounging casually all around the garden, braiding one another’s hair and weaving flowers into the plaits, while men in white robes played games of chess and croquet. 

It was all very much like Wonderland, or perhaps Oz – where everything was beautiful, but nothing made much sense in the context of a normal, human setting. Hank wondered if maybe he _had_ fallen down the rabbit hole, or rather, been shot up so far into the sky that he actually landed in Heaven. 

Then, right before him, there were three gigantic, stone statues, each somewhere around thirty feet tall, which – to Hank’s understandable confusion – portrayed the founding fathers: Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, and George Washington.

They had been designed to look like Gods, it seemed. With golden laurals atop their heads, woven sandals upon their feet, and their bodies draped in white sheets, like Greek himations.

All three of them were knelt down on one knee, arms extended in a welcoming fashion, and in their hands, each held a single, golden object outward in offering to the people who may walk beneath them. 

In Jefferson’s hands, he held a scroll. Beneath his statue, a golden plaque read, _“For wisdom, purpose, and intelligence of the mind.”_

In Franklin’s, a key – alongside the words, _“For justice, righteousness and moral guidance.”_

In Washington’s, a sword. And beneath him, _“For strength, courage and military prowess.”_

At the base of the Washington statue, two men and one woman were on their knees in prayer before him. They were whispering in unison with one another, repeating the same phrase over and over again. 

“We three pray to thee for the strength to fight our battles,” They said. “The courage to stand tall, and the will to carry on. Father Washington, hear our prayers.” 

Hank’s mouth fell open slightly, and a slightly amused smile was beginning to form on his face as he watched them, arms crossed over his chest. 

This fucking city, Hank realized…worships the goddamn founding fathers. 

_Okay._

Every city had its fair share of fools, and if this was their one vice, then he supposed it wasn’t as bad as it could've been. Anything to carry them through the night with promises of salvation, well, everybody had to do what they had to do. 

Making his way past them – to which they offered him no acknowledgment as he went by – he headed towards the exit of the garden, which was marked by a rounded, stone archway intricately designed to resemble that of Grecian Gothic pillars. The arch was built into the side of a stone wall, which appeared to have an aqueduct running overtop it and out into the city in both the left and right directions.

Near the arch exit, a young woman was standing by the wall, handing out baseballs from a woven basket to a line of patrons in front of her.

“Good luck at the raffle!” She said, each time handing a ball to one of the patrons. Behind her, there was a small sign propped up on the brick wall, advertising the _Columbian Raffle and Fair of 1912._

That must have been what was going on, then, and would explain the fireworks and music. 

Through the archway out of the gardens, it opened out onto a wide, cobblestone street which dropped off the opposite side into the clouds. The drop-off was blocked by a metallic fence to prevent people falling off and to their deaths. The street extended to different areas to both the left and right of where Hank stood. 

A few islands away, in front of him, on a different cloud structure, was Monument Island, the one that held the golden statue of the angel boy – who was probably taller than the Eiffel Tower. 

“Yeah, that's where they said he’d be.” Hank muttered quietly to himself, holding up his hand over his eyes of block the sun as he squinted up at the golden boy, whose metallic surface glimmered in the sunlight.

The two twin strangers who had hired Hank – _Simon and Daniel_ , as they had said their names were – had told him that the boy he was looking for lived right inside of that statue, which was actually a tower, as well as a historical city monument, hence it being called Monument Island. 

But…they hadn’t told him anything else. They had said that his name was _Connor_ , and then they had shown Hank photos of him, and told him that he lived in that tower, there. 

And that was it. Anything else, Hank had no idea, and he definitely couldn’t have imagined that the tower would be this incredible in person. A photo on a postcard just didn’t do it any justice. 

Whoever this kid was, he must be important if he gets to live in the goddamn golden angel statue in the middle of the city. So why, then, did they decide to send _Hank_ – all by himself – to go and break him out?

Maybe he was in over his head, he thought. This job might be a little too important for him, and may even be breaching into territory he isn’t comfortable with. 

To the side, on the cobblestone street, there was a billboard shaped like a movie poster, which had a rococo-style painting of the golden tower, and inside, there was a little lamb painted at the heart of the boy with gleams of holy light coming off of it. It read, “THE TOWER PROTECTS THE LAMB FROM THE FALSE SHEPHERD.”

Was Connor this lamb that he kept seeing? That wasn’t a cheerful thought, considering Hank was essentially here to _kidnap_ him.

Suddenly, from in front of him, and out of his line of sight, a young boy’s chipper voice came and pulled Hank out of his thoughts. 

“Telegram, Mr. Anderson!” The boy said, and Hank looked down, his brow furrowed in confusion, to see a small, blonde boy dressed in a newsboy outfit holding out a small piece of paper to Hank, a huge smile on his face.

A telegram? _Here?_ How the hell did anybody know who he was if he’d never been here before and wasn’t supposed to be?

“What?” Hank asked, more so to himself than to the boy, his words quiet with confusion. “How is that even possible?” 

The boy ignored him and just continued to smile, holding up the paper higher and waving it around a little, obviously excited to deliver the message. “Telegram for you, sir!” He said again. 

Hank squinted his eyes in suspicion and struggled to find the words to express his confusion at the situation, which he was certain must be some kind of misunderstanding. Anderson wasn’t that unique of a name, so maybe this was all just a coincidence, and the telegram was meant for the _other_ “Mr. Anderson.” 

He mouthed “What?” to himself again, shaking his head faintly, but no sound came out. 

The boy continued to wave the paper around and bounced from foot-to-foot. Hank reached out tentatively, still eyeing the boy curiously, and grabbed the telegram from his hands. He unfolded it and held it up to read it.

“‘Hank, STOP. Do not alert Kamski to your presence, STOP. Whatever you do, do not pick number seventy-seven, STOP. From, Simon.’ What the hell...?”

When he looked back up to question his courier about the nature of this message, the boy had already left and was running back over to a bicycle nearby which had stacks of papers packed into its front basket, which he then mounted and rode swiftly away down the cobblestone street. 

Hank looked back down at the telegram in his hands and studied it, flipping it over to check the back but finding nothing helpful, and then stood there for a moment doing absolutely nothing. He looked around him at the people standing nearby, all going about their business in the market square, and paying him no attention. 

Was he being played? The message made absolutely no sense, and the fact that it was from Simon confused him. Simon and Daniel should still be in that little wooden boat, riding back to the shores of Camden – if they hadn’t drowned from the storm, that is. Unless they’d called the telegram in early, knowing that he would be getting here around this time and coordinating it so that it would arrive on the dot. But that still didn’t explain the contents of the message. 

Why didn’t they want Kamski to know he was here? What did that random Prophet have to do with any of this, and how would that man have any idea who Hank was anyway?

Things were starting to look more and more _illegal_ the longer he was here. The likely heavily-guarded, golden tower with the boy, the cryptic messages, Father Kamski not needing to know about his being in the city…all of this was starting to look like a job that may have been more than Hank could chew. 

He knew that maybe this job could turn out to be a little sourer than he’d like…but he wasn’t looking to get made. Money was nice, but, not if he had to go to prison for it. If Simon and Daniel actually expected him to break into this historical, religious monument and _kidnap_ this boy who was starting to look like he may not actually need any rescuing – well, they had something coming to them. He wasn’t no errand boy, and even though he may do people’s dirty work sometimes, he wasn’t a fool, and he knew when to quit while he was ahead. 

But…he wasn’t quite there yet. Resigning the mission was in the back of his mind, as well as a plethora of possible consequences, but that was all still speculation. He didn’t have proof _yet_ that this was going to turn bad. 

Hank sighed and folded the paper up, slipping it into his back pocket for safe-keeping. 

To his right, down the street, he saw that the road led up a short flight of stairs and out into a plaza, which was decorated to the hilt with a small carnival. People danced and children played as music rang out from all around them. Venders selling different foods and trinkets were spread out in booths all around the area. 

Hank headed up into the area and tried to make his way through the crowd, which seemed denser now that he had to get through. 

On one stage that Hank passed, a man was giving a demonstration for a new product, which was designed specifically for the Columbian Police Department, and was currently being implemented into everyday use. What the man was displaying caught Hank’s attention, so he stopped walking to check it out. 

In the man’s hand, he held a silvery, metallic contraption which was nestled comfortably on his forearm, latched around him like a brace. It was able to be held by four fingers loops which looked like brass knuckles, and the front of it extended about a foot outwards, past his hand, and ended in a terrifying looking set of spinning blades, which he was displaying the speed at which they could turn.

Moving gears were visible all along the sides of the tool, and if Hank had to describe it in one way, he supposed it looked sort of like a makeshift gun – whose shooting abilities had been replaced with that of those blades – and that it could be attached to your arm like a prosthetic. The man on stage explained that this was known as a “Sky-Hook,” and was going to be “Very helpful indeed in catching those _nasty_ criminals that pollute the streets of Columbia!”

Whatever kind of catching criminals they were planning to do with those things, Hank didn’t want to find out. There wasn’t going to be any “catching” about it. One meet-up with something like that and your whole face would be mangled. 

The thought of it made Hank nervous, and the overwhelming presence of the crowd around him suddenly made him feel quite claustrophobic. He wasn’t here just to pick flowers and make prayers – he was here _illegally_ , and meeting face-to-face with one of those Sky-Hooks wasn’t at all what he had planned on when he took this job. Locked away in a foreign prison, or be torturously murdered by way of that death-contraption on stage were starting to look like they might be his only options, if he failed to get to the boy, that is.

Further into the crowd, people dressed in deep red, theatrical Devil costumes danced around in the square near fiery braziers, playing out scenarios where kids dressed as angels were defeating them with white swords, and pretending to cast them back down to Hell. 

_Disturbing_ , Hank thought, but not entirely uninteresting to watch. If he wasn’t here on a mission, he might have enjoyed taking his time exploring the festival, but that kind of leisure wasn’t really on his mind right now. 

On the opposite side of the square, there was another archway, which had signs nearby advertising “MONUMENT ISLAND, THIS WAY,” alongside arrows pointing in the direction through the arch, as well as a map of the city.

Hank stopped for a moment to look at the map, reading it over carefully to see the directions he would need to take to get to the island, and making mental notes of the path he wanted to take. 

When he turned away from the sign to head down the steps on the opposite side of the arch, he was startled to see that two men – who definitely hadn’t been there just a moment prior – were now standing right in front of him, almost too close for comfort. They were dressed in identical tan suits with bright green ties, and were standing shoulder-to-shoulder at the top of the steps. Hank had almost run into them given the almost no space between them.

The man on the right was holding a silver plate with a single coin placed in the center, and the one on the left had a double-sided chalkboard menu hung over his shoulders. 

The chalkboard on the left man’s chest had a white line drawn down the middle. On the left side, the top said HEADS and had twelve tally-marks beneath it, and on the right side, the top said TAILS but had no tally-marks.

It was the two men who had hired Hank, the twins with the blonde hair, Simon and Daniel. The ones who had brought him to the island.

Hank’s mouth dropped open at the sight of them and he backed up a few feet to give himself room to speak comfortably. 

“Oh my God…” Hank said, his words rushed and his hands gesturing frantically at the two of them as he tried to grasp the reality of this extremely strange situation. “How the fuck did you two get here so fast?” He asked, mouth agape and eyes frantically moving between the two of them. They had obviously heard his question, as they made vague acknowledgement of it with their eyes, but they ignored him.

“Heads?” Asked the one on the left – Daniel. 

“Or tails?” The one on the right said – Simon. 

“What!?” Hank asked, head shaking and his mouth moving but saying nothing as he tried to think of what in the world he was supposed to say in this situation. This couldn’t possibly be them!

Hank reached into his back pocket hastily then, and pulled out the telegram from before. “And what is this!?” He asked, unfolding it and holding it out in front of them so that they could see it. 

The two men ignored him again and didn’t give any indication that they seemed to care about what Hank had just asked. They almost seemed to have imperceptibly rolled their eyes at his question. 

The one on the right picked up the coin from the dish then, flipped it up into the air, and caught it tightly in his hand. He held out his clasped fist in front of him to Hank.

“Heads?” Repeated the one on the left, an amused rise in his voice and a smirk on his face.

“Or tails?” Asked the other.

Hank stared at them, open-mouthed, his hand holding the telegram falling down in defeat to his side as he stood there, completely lost in confusion. 

“What?” He asked, and they repeated the question again, to which Hank stood and stared at them, but did nothing. He felt like he’d just seen a ghost – _two_ ghosts, and they were standing right in front of him. Like somebody had died and then walked right out of the morgue like nothing was wrong. 

Simon and Daniel waited patiently for him to respond, barely moving and not saying anything else as they gave him time to get a hold on the situation. They obviously weren’t going to explain what was going on, and seemed to almost be enjoying Hank’s befuddlement. 

“ _Fine_ …” Hank said, through gritted teeth. He sighed, trying to calm down a bit so that he could think rationally. “Tails. Now, _please_ , tell me what the hell is going on here.” 

Simon flipped the coin into the air again and skillfully caught it in his hand like no big deal. When he opened his palm, it was heads-up.

“Told you.” Daniel said jeeringly, looking into the hand of his brother.

“Hmph…” Simon let out a soft noise of contempt from his throat, and then turned to the board to pick up a piece of chalk.

“I never find that as satisfying as I'd imagined.” Daniel admitted with a disappointed lilt in his tone. He sighed apathetically as Simon made another white tally on the “HEADS” side of the board, among all the others, and then replaced the chalk into the tray at the bottom of the board. 

“Chin up,” Simon said, placing his fingers lightly under Daniel’s chin and lifting his head up. “There's always next time.” He reminded him, and smiled warmly at his brother.

“Alright,” Daniel resigned, smiling back. “I suppose there is.” 

They turned away from Hank then, completely disregarding him, and walked off to the side. On the chalkboard hanging from Daniel’s back, Hank noticed a similarly split chart of HEADS and TAILS, and underneath the HEADS side, the entire section was filled with dozens of tallies, all the way from top to bottom. The TAILS side was as entirely blank as the front. 

Every person who had come through had apparently gotten heads, which was impossible to believe – unless the coin had been rigged. 

“Hey, are you gonna tell me what’s going on, now?” Hank asked, following the two men to where they had moved off to the side. 

“Probably not.” Simon said, shrugging indifferently. Daniel nodded at his brother in agreement. 

“Why not!?” Hank demanded. “I _am_ doing this job for you, so you could at least tell me something.”

“Because that’s not how not works.” Daniel replied, turning around to look at Hank, who had placed a hand on his shoulder. He shrugged it off, as though he didn’t want to be touched by a common man. 

“And how _does_ it work?” Hank asked. Simon and Daniel took a step back from him as though he were suddenly infringing on their space, despite the fact that they had just done the same to him moments before.

“We won’t leave until _you_ do.” They spoke in perfect unison, and Hank noticed that their voices were almost exactly the same, with only a slight difference in their speaking patterns. It didn’t sound like two separate people speaking at once – it sounded like an echo of a single voice. 

“What does that mean?” Hank asked, and they only shrugged in response. 

He wasn’t getting anywhere with them, and they were being agonizingly cryptic on purpose. If they were trying to frustrate him, they were doing a hell of a job because he was thoroughly frustrated and confused.

He’d been hired by strange folk before, people who didn’t give him all the gory details because he didn’t need to know them – mob bosses and the like who needed a hired gun who’d get the job done and not ask questions – but this was starting to get ridiculous. 

There was a certain level of client confidentiality that he adhered to, and he was fine to let them have their secrets. Actually, it was better that way so that Hank didn’t have to know the intimate details of the job, and could avoid ending up getting attached to the people involved. Being hired muscle for dirty jobs wasn’t a business where he wanted to feel things for anybody he was doing wrong to. It was messy business when emotions got into the mix, and he’d rather just get the job done and move on.

But Simon and Daniel seemed like they were purposely trying to create a ruse to make his job harder. Or they were holding back information that he needed to know, legality information. 

All roads led back to that money though. That money that could make it so he’d never have to take a job like this again. And ultimately, those numbers had a power over him that he couldn’t shy away from. 

And that’s why he was here. That’s why he let people play with his life, why he let himself fall short of having good morals – because he could be bought with a couple dollars and a drink. 

_That_ was who Hank Anderson was.

So when Simon and Daniel refused to speak, Hank gathered up what little dignity he had and just walked away, dropping the subject of answers entirely, and sucking up his pride to continue on this job.

Whatever they weren’t telling him, he probably didn’t need to know anyway. And maybe it was better that way, to keep those doors shut tight.

The two twins watched him as he left, trailing his movements with their eyes as he descended the stairs and then continued on around the corner and down the street. 

A little further on, on a large billboard in the middle of the street, there was a photo of a hand with the letters CA carefully carved into the skin on top. The hand was drawn to appear veiney and weathered, to illicit fear of whoever owned it. 

Above the hand, the sign read, “YOU SHALL KNOW THE FALSE SHEPHERD BY HIS MARK!” 

Flyers were attached to the poster, which warned of similar machinations about this “ _False Shepherd_ ,” whom Hank was extremely curious to learn more about. This must be the Columbian boogeyman, and definitely wasn’t somebody he’d heard about before, living in Detroit.

He reached up his right hand to grab one of the flyers, but then his heart fell at what he saw. 

Upon the top of his hand, scratched into the skin, was that same symbol: _CA._

“What the fuck...?” He whispered to himself, now holding his right hand in his left and rubbing the letters frantically with his thumb, trying to wipe them away…but they didn’t come off. It was a well-healed, but still noticeably red, _scar_ , carved precisely into his skin. He’d never seen it before, and he sure as hell didn’t do it. 

Panicking, he rolled down his right sleeve to cover the mark on his hand, buttoning it around his thumb so that it wouldn’t fall down. 

Was this all a joke!? The scar was healed almost perfectly, held no signs of having been done recently, and sure as well wasn’t a fake. But he _didn’t_ do it. He had never in his life seen this thing before, and he didn’t have a clue in the world what it meant. 

Had the men who hired him done this to him? Set him up and sent him on this wild-goose chase around Columbia, only trying to drive him insane? 

Whatever it was, he needed to play it cool. Looking suspicious wouldn’t do him any favors, and he still had a job to do. None of this made sense anymore, but the amount of money he’d been offered – and _shown_ – was too much to walk away from. 

Further down the street, there was a bronze statue of a man in a suit, holding a tiny model of the city of Columbia in his hand, which was levitating about an inch above his palm. 

Hank approached the statue, and saw that below it, a plaque read, “Professor Lutece Gave Columbia Her Wings.” 

For a moment, the statue seemed to waver, almost as though it were being shaken by a wave of energy that had washed over it, and almost imperceptibly, the pose of the man seemed to change, but it was so insignificant that Hank wondered if he had imagined it. 

A young girl stood beside the statue with whom Hank assumed were her parents, and she was excitedly engaged in a discussion with them. 

“I heard that Mister Lutece is the only one who’s allowed to visit the Lamb in his tower! Is that true?” The girl asked, tugging on her mother’s dress sleeve. 

“Yes, it is. He takes care of the Lamb, and makes sure that he’s healthy and safe.” Her mother answered, petting the back of the girl’s hair as she admired the statue. 

Hank continued down the street past them, and now began to hear the sounds of a chorus of people singing from somewhere nearby, and the further he went, the louder the music grew.

Past numerous more statues of historical figures, he made his way to the end of the street, where he saw more of those girls with baskets of baseballs standing beside an open gate, which had MONUMENT ISLAND engraved overhead.

Wherever that led, that’s where he needed to be.

Another billboard, by the gate, displayed a painting of Death, draped in billowy black robes which spiraled like smoke at the bottom, like a specter. He was holding a scythe, which was disguised to resemble a shepherd’s curled staff, and at his feet, a pure, white lamb was seen looking up at him. Death was trying to lead the lamb away from the golden tower of the boy, and out into a cornfield. 

THE FALSE SHEPHERD SEEKS ONLY TO LEAD OUR LAMB ASTRAY.

Hank made his way past the girls and through the gate to be met with a small, open grassy alcove which had a stage to the right, and to the left, a huge crowd of people.

On the stage, a man in a way too tall, black top-hat was leading the crowd around him in song; a song which Hank knew he'd never heard before. Behind him, the red curtains of the stage were pulled closed, and in the pit at the front of the stage, an orchestra of instruments were being played merrily, their players perfectly in-time with the singing. 

Spread throughout the crowd, and around the edges, were about a dozen policemen, all of them holding those terrifying looking, bladed Sky-Hooks that Hank had seen earlier at that demonstration. He swallowed thickly and suddenly felt quite hot all over, fear filling him and running through his blood at the sight of those weapons.

Past the stage, directly opposite Hank, there was another golden gate which led to the entrance to Monument Island, but the path towards it was blocked by an enormous crowd of people, all standing before the stage and in Hank’s way. 

He took a deep breath in to calm himself before stepping into the horde of people and trying to politely push his way through to the other side, repeatedly muttering “ _Excuse me_ ,” and “ _Sorry_ ,” whenever he bumped into someone. 

When he was about halfway through, the crowd finished their song and clapped animatedly at the end. The orchestra stopped playing, and the top-hatted announcer moved to the center of the stage and called out into the crowd excitedly, his arms raised into the air like he was lifting something.

“Splendid, haha! And now, the 1912 Raffle has officially begun!” He called, and then continued to speak congratulations for the “Beautiful day we’ve had!”

With everyone now hyper-focused on the announcer, they wouldn’t budge to let Hank through, and they were inadvertently blocking him from getting through. 

From somewhere beside Hank in the crowd, he suddenly heard somebody calling out to him, and so he turned to look at where the sound was coming from. 

A young blonde girl wearing a red, white, and blue dress was making her way over to him. In her arms, she toted a large, woven basket, which was full of white baseballs with red numbers painted on them. Just like the girl from the garden.

“Hey, mister! Mister!” She called, waving her hand at him excitedly and then dashing over to talk to him. She came right up on him and stood a little too close for comfort, clearly trying to breach his personal space and elicit a reaction out of him towards her, _an attraction_. 

“Wouldn't you like a ball, mister? She picked one of the baseballs out of her basket and held it up to him.

“Sorry, no sale.” Hank said, putting his hand up to show he wasn’t interested. He took a step back, trying to create space between them so she got the hint that he wasn’t taking the bait. She had to have been at least thirty years his junior, and he wasn’t looking to get played. 

He tried to walk away from her, and continue making his way through the crowd to get to the Monument Island entrance, but she reached out her hand and placed it on his arm, pulling him back lightly. 

The girl smiled brightly at him when he turned back to her, and she giggled. “Silly, there's never a charge for the raffle.” She said, still smiling through her words, which were lyrical and soft, suspiciously trustworthy. “You been sleeping under a rock?”

Hank looked over the heads of the crowd at the open gate to Monument Island, then back to the girl who was waiting patiently for his answer, and then he let out a deep sigh, debating his options. He needed to go, but, he supposed he could stay for the raffle, just for a few minutes. It shouldn’t take too long. 

“Alright.” He said, and reached out to accept the ball from her hand, and she smiled in accomplishment and gave it over to him. 

He turned the ball over in his hand to look at the number on it, and the girl peered over to see it as well, obviously curious herself what it was. 

_Seventy-seven._

_The number he wasn’t supposed to pick_. 

“Seventy-seven?” The girl exclaimed excitedly, her words thick with feigned enthusiasm and vague eroticism, obviously still trying to flirt with him. “That's a lucky number.” She stated, but he doubted it. “I'll be rooting for you.”

“Now, bring me the bowl!” The announcer cried out, and gestured to the right of the stage at a young woman who was carrying a large, glass bowl filled with clips of paper. 

“Is that not the prettiest young _white girl_ in all of Columbia? Haha!” He called out, admiring her as she walked across the stage towards him.

 _White girl!?_ He’d _have_ to have been kidding, Hank thought. Jesus Christ.

The crowd hushed then, waiting in anticipation to hear what number was selected from the bowl. They all gripped their baseballs excitedly in their palms, hoping to be chosen. 

The top-hatted man theatrically reached into the glass bowl that the girl held, and selected a paper carefully. He held it up dramatically into the air once he had chosen, and then unfolded it. 

With a soft clearing of his throat, he revealed what was on the paper.

“All right, then…the winner is…number seventy-seven!”

Hank couldn’t believe it, or maybe he could, since this all seemed like a set-up. Simon _specifically_ told him not to pick that number, and what did he go and do? Picked the fucking number on his first try. And he hadn’t even wanted to stay for the raffle. He could’ve just been on his merry way and not stuck around, but he did anyway, like it was supposed to happen. 

Like fate. 

The blonde girl from before, who had given him the ball, grabbed his hand and excitedly held it up in the air. He was shocked at the sudden contact of her touching his arm, as well as at the fact that he’d won, so he just stood there, absolutely astonished and not knowing what to do.

“Over here! Over here! He's the winner!” She called, jumping up and down and trying to get the announcer’s attention, which she finally got, as well as the attention of every other person in the square, who were now all completely silent and staring over at Hank like he had a third-eye.

“Number seventy-seven, come and claim your prize!” The top-hatted announcer called, and then gestured towards the red curtain on the stage behind him, which was slowly opening up before the crowd.

Behind the curtain, there was a young white man and a black woman, both of them dressed in ripped-up wedding attire and looking disheveled, like they’d been assaulted. They were tied up to one another and couldn’t move, both of them crying and begging to be let go.

“First throw at the lovely couple!” The announcer called, laughing to himself. The crowd cheered and laughed along with him. 

“First throw! First throw! First throw!” The crowd chanted loudly, and Hank couldn’t hear himself think with the chanting around him, combined with the blood-flow beating in his ears, which were now red from anger and discomfort.

“Please…” The bride plead, looking down at Hank from her place on the stage, her eyes full off terror and grief. “Please don't do this.”

Hank looked back at her and tried to find the words to speak. Tears were pouring down her face and her voice was weak, as she’d probably been crying for a while. 

He shook his head frantically and mouthed, “I won’t.” to her, trying to calm her nerves and reassure her that he would never, _ever_ , do something as cruel and depraved as that. 

“It was me. It was all me! Please, please don’t hurt her.” The groom cried, trying to do anything he could to protect the woman.

Hank did nothing, completely at a loss for words and action in this situation, his blood boiling but also frozen with fear and confusion. He wanted to save them, but he didn’t know how. There were too many people in the crowd, _too many cops_ , for him to be able to pull anything.

“Come on,” The announcer called, annoyance obvious in his voice, like he was trying to play it up for the crowd’s amusement. “Are you gonna throw it…or are you taking your coffee _black_ these days?”

Hank shook his head and scowled angrily at the announcer, who had his arms crossed in irritation, like Hank was wasting his time. The man had probably assumed most people would throw the ball immediately without a second thought, that they’d take joy in the act. 

“Let her go, please!” The groom pled. “I'm the one you want! She’s innocent!”

The announcer laughed at the cries of the couple, and turned back to Hank to speak to him.

“Oh, come on…looks like we've got a shy one here!” The man called. “Well, we've gotta do something about that, don’t we? Time's a-wasting, my boy! Why don't you give her a throw!”

Hank gripped the ball tightly in his hand, squeezing it in his palm to release his anger. He couldn’t just stand by, and do nothing, he was too upset at this situation and wanted to wipe that smug look right off of that man’s face. 

“Oh, I’ve got something for you, you son of a bitch!” Hank called, and then held his arm up to hurl the ball at the announcer.

“Don’t you dare!” The announcer ordered, putting up his arms hastily in defense over his face, obviously having noticed that Hank was aiming at him.

Hank leaned his arm back to get a good throw, but when he swung it back forward, he felt somebody grab his wrist aggressively and stop him from releasing the ball.

“It's him!” They called, grasping tightly around his wrist like a handcuff and preventing him from pulling away. Hank tried to use his left hand to pry open their grasp, but other men began surrounding and grabbing onto him then, holding him back from moving.

 _Him!?_ What the hell did they mean, _him?_

The announcer lowered his arms from shielding his face, and then smoothed out his clothes. The crowd was entirely silent now, their cries of excitement and cheers mellowed out, and the married couple onstage had stopped crying, obviously in complete shock from what had just gone down.

The top-hatted man walked over to the edge of the stage, then knelt down directly in front of Hank and shook his head. 

The policeman who had grabbed Hank’s wrist roughly pulled him over to the edge of the stage and handed his trapped right arm to the announcer, who took it and then firmly grasped Hank’s hand – _the hand with the CA symbol._

With smooth hands that felt like they’d never been worked a day in their lives, the announcer examined Hank’s skin carefully, running his fingers over the healed scar and tracing it lightly. 

“Hey, now,” The man said, speaking calmly as though they were friends. “Where'd you get this brand, boy?” He asked, tilting his head in suspicion. 

Hank shook his head quickly. “I don’t- _I don’t know_ …I don’t know what that is, I swear!” The man tsked disapprovingly and wagged his finger at Hank. 

“Don't you know that makes you the no-good, back-stabbin', snake-in-the-grass, _False Shepherd_?” The man asked.

“The False Shepherd!” The crowd cried in disbelief. People backed away from him and began to leave the area in fear of the man before them. They acted like the Devil had just risen from the ground to smite them.

“Oh, and we ain't lettin' no False Shepherd into our flock, no sir!” The announcer called, now standing up and pacing around the stage as he spoke. “Show him what we got planned, boys!”

The course of events over the next few seconds happened so quickly that Hank didn’t have enough time to think about his actions with so much as one brain-cell. 

To the left of him, one of the cops who had been holding him back raised their Sky-Hook into the air, the blades spinning and trying to intimidate Hank into submission. In a panic, Hank roughly pulled his right arm back from the cop who was holding it, and then grabbed that same cop and shoved his face into the blades. 

People in the crowd screamed at the sight of the blood and the now mangled face of the man as his skin and flesh were shredded to bits right in front of them. The sounds of the man screaming in agony cut through Hank’s ears like nails on a chalkboard and he backed away from the scene before him, terrified at what he’d just done. 

The other police in the area stopped dead in their tracks and stared at him, absolutely unprepared for what he’d just done. As cops, they should’ve reacted with more courage at taking care of the situation, but they looked at Hank like he might wipe them all out with but a glance. 

Hank had only reacted impulsively, but they looked at him like he was the _Devil_. 

The policemen, obviously unprepared for this fight, all raised their arms up quickly in surrender, dropping their Sky-Hooks to the ground, and backing out of the square quickly, trying to usher people out of the area and get them to safety.

He killed him. He _killed_ that man. A real person, whose blood was now on his hands. He swore that he’d left that behind, and he hated to think that maybe, somewhere, deep down inside of him…maybe he enjoyed it.

 _No_ , he thought, it was just self-defense, and he could never enjoy something like that. They would’ve killed him otherwise…or put him into prison.

But was taking a human life worth more than being imprisoned in a foreign land? 

He felt sick, but at the same time, he felt adrenaline, power…and he wished he could take it back. 

Sirens were blaring in the area now, and the area was entirely clear. The announcer on the stage had fled the scene as well, and the glass bowl of papers had been dropped and shattered on the stage.

The couple on the stage had been abandoned, still tied up, and looking as frightened as ever at what had just transpired in front of them. 

Hank hoisted himself up onto the stage and slowly approached the married couple,holding his hands up in peace to show them that he wasn’t going to hurt them, and they allowed him to come near them.

He made quick work of the ropes which had been tied around the couple, and the bindings dropped loosely to the floor of the stage. 

The man immediately wrapped himself around the woman in a tight hug, pulling her close to his chest and leaning his chin on the top of her head. He whispered calming words to her to try and soothe her, and brushed his fingers through her hair softly. 

“Thank you so much.” The man said, looking up at Hank. Hank nodded back and smiled lightly.

“Just get somewhere safe.” Hank said, and then waved at them vaguely with his hand as he hopped back off the stage. He’d offer to take them with him, to protect them, but honestly, they’d probably be in more danger _with him_. And if every cop in the city was after him, for being this “ _False Shepherd_ ,” then the couple would hopefully be able to slip out unnoticed and get somewhere safe.

The gate to Monument Island was closed off now, and had been blocked by an unpassable barrier. There seemed to be no way through, so Hank would have to find a different way around to the other side. 

The body of the man he’d killed lay lifeless on the grass, blood drenching his clothes and the skin of his face destroyed. Hank would’ve gagged at the sight, but he didn’t. He’d seen something like this too many times for it to have an effect anymore, but he still felt terribly about it. 

The only way for him to live with traumas like these were to separate himself from the reality of them. Which was basically what his entire life consisted of. _Avoidance. Dissociation._

From the ground, he reached down and picked up one of the Sky-Hooks that the police had abandoned, and attached it securely to his right arm. 

It wasn’t a gun, like he was used to, but it would have to do. He didn’t have much else in the way of protection, and he needed to have _something_ , at least.

He took one last look back at the stage to see that the couple had now left, and then he made his way back to the gate he had entered through, and set off on his way to Monument Island.

_To kidnap Connor._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The song that the crowd were singing at the raffle is called _"Goodnight Irene."_
> 
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bcbWkE-BtSM


End file.
